Summer SAVY 2017, Session 5/Day 1- Commodore Investment Fund (Rising 6th/7th)

Posted by morganr1 on Monday, July 17, 2017 in SAVY.

Today we embarked on our journey into the world of Wall Street. Most students began the day having never heard the phrase “strategic investing” so we started by answering the following questions by first using the words “investment” and “market” as they are typically used to hearing them.

What is an investment? Students came up with great examples of ways that they have invested their time and energy into school and into their summer hobbies like sports or reading. How are financial investments different? They involve money and capital. However, both have the same essence: putting in resources now for a desired future result.
What does strategic mean? A strategy involves a plan to reach a desired goal. In order to make it a good plan there must be logic and analysis to back up the strategy. We practiced our logical problem solving skills today by thinking about a few brain teasers (we ran out of time to go over the answers so we will do that first thing in the morning).
If you want to test your own skills try this one out. “Mike and Molly attend a party with four other pairs of friends. (10 people in total each pair knows each other). At this party everyone shakes hands with each person they have never met before. At the end of the night Molly realizes that each of the other nine people shook hands with a different number of people. How many hands did Mike shake?” We then introduced the concepts of supply and demand by trying to buy and sell “widgets” in our class. It’s amazing how quickly the invisible hand goes to work in a free market.

We worked on another very practical business skill today: constructive peer critiques. This will be necessary for a successful professional team atmosphere. Today we practiced by discussing which super hero is the best. Students struggled at first to emphasize group learning instead of emphasizing that their point was correct. In the end they did a much better job asking each other clarifying questions and inquiring politely about their concerns. Our young professionals are off to a great start and I’m looking forward to starting some of our simulations tomorrow!

Mr. Blake Dunshee